The Hollywood Reporter has picked Fremantle as the winner of the inaugural International Producer of the Year award.

The award will be presented annually to an independent producer from outside the U.S. that THR judges to be the most exciting and innovative company of the year.

THR will present the 2023 Producer of the Year award to Andrea Scrosati, Group COO and CEO of Continental Europe, and Christian Vesper, CEO of Global Drama, at a gala event at the Venice Film Festival on September 3.

With a global network of nearly 50 companies — ranging from German giant UFA (Deutschland ’83) and Italian TV group Lux Vide (Netflix’s Medici) to Israel’s Abot Hameiri (Shtisel) and Richard Brown’s Passenger (True Detective) — and revenues of more than $2.5 billion (€2.3 billion) last year, Fremantle is clearly one of the biggest international indies out there.

But what put it over the top as International Producer of the Year was its strategy — driven by CEO Jennifer Mullin together with Scrosati and Vesper — to bet on talent by doubling down on high-end drama, including independent film, snatching up companies like Ireland’s Element Pictures, producers of Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oscar-winning The Favourite (and his upcoming, Venice competition title, Poor Things); and Italy’s Wildside (HBO’s My Brilliant Friend) and The Apartment (Sophia Coppola’s Priscilla); while also locking in top creatives through first-look and development deals with the likes of Angelina Jolie, All Quiet on the Western Front director Edward Berger’s shingle Nine Hours, Chernobyl Director Johan Renck, Luther creator Neil Cross and acclaimed producer Nicholas Weinstock (AppleTV+’ Severance).

The goal of all this M&A activity — Fremantle has spent more than a quarter of a billion dollars since 2021 acquiring around a dozen companies — was never to “buy growth,” says Scrosati, but to “invest in talent” for the long term.

The growth has come — first half revenues topped $1.1 billion (€1 billion) this year — but not at the expense of quality, and boundary-pushing productions. There are no less than five Fremantle productions premiering at the Venice Film Festival this year. Alongside Lanthimos’ Poor Things and Coppola’s Priscilla, Fremantle’s Italian divisions will be unspooling Saverio Costanzo’s Finally Dawn featuring Lily James, Willem Dafoe and newcomer Rebecca Antonaci, Stefano Sollima’s crime drama Adagio with Italian stars Pierfrancesco Favino and Toni Servillo and Enea, the sophomore effort from director Pietro Castellito (The Predators). Upcoming Fremantle-backed features include the Angelina Jolie-directed Without Blood, an adaptation of Alessandro Baricco’s bestseller, starring Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir, and Luca Guadagnino’s version of William S. Burroughs cult novel Queer, starring Drew Starkey and Daniel Craig.

“It is quite rare to find producers who have a vision and, at the same time, the ability to put their talent at the service of the vision of others, providing resources and protection of the creative act,” said Stefano Sollima, who is directing the car-maker biopic Ferrari from Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight for AppleTV+, with Fremantle and The Apartment producing.

By finding new ways to finance and distribute cutting-edge content without compromising on creative freedom, and, through their Global Drama division, inventing new cross-border means of co-production, Fremantle have proven themselves to be not just a great indie producer, but a visionary one. The inaugural International Producer of the Year award goes to a company that has shown what the future of drama production could look like.

“[Fremantle’s] creative spirit, their hunger for the new and their wonderful talent to create a sense of family inspires us at Nine Hours every day,” says Edward Berger. “We are very proud to be working with them. This recognition couldn’t come to a more deserving producer.”